Would you pay to keep your favorite TV show going?

Think of your favorite TV show.

Suppose it got canceled, but the production company, actors, writers, crew, and rabid fan-base weren’t ready to call it quits. They decide to keep working without a TV deal, and decide to work strictly for DVD.

How much would you be willing to shell out for a complete season of first-run episodes on DVD? $100? $200? More?

I think with the rise in popularity of shows on DVD, and the success of the never-broadcast “Family Guy” episode on DVD, plus with so many shows being wildly popular with a core base without reaching popular acclaim, I think this might be an option in the future. What do y’all think?

Personally, I’d be willing to shell out $200 for a new season of Arrested Development if that was the only way we’d get new episodes-- and with the condition that the quality remained high.

Happy

I’d probably shell out 250$ for a complete season if it meant I’d get 18-22 new episodes

Fans of Star Trek: Enterprise were raising money to fund another season of the series. They amassed a couple million dollars. Alas, it was not to be.

No. I was (but am no longer) a fan of *Enterprise * and not one cent of the three million raised by its fans this past spring was mine. I won’t even spend the $30 it takes to own most television seasons on DVD except in very rare exceptions. It’s just not worth it to me.

Me either. Hell, I don’t even subscribe to HBO, even though I know I’m missing all those shows that are supposed to be better than anything on regular TV.

So there are only two of us willing to do this? Apparently this TV-series DVD thing isn’t catching on in every way. We only want to buy reruns we know are good, and not gamble on new episodes.

That’s too much money for me. I’d pay extra to subscribe to a favorite show though. It might end up costing me $200-$250 over the long haul, but it’s better than paying it all up front.

I would definitely subscribe to a “Futurama” TV series. Provided they do guarantee a certain number of episodes. I’d even be OK with them broadcasting it to others for free as long as they throw us some sort of bone. Something like special edition DVDs with various not released to others content.

No other show leaps out at me now from the past few years. Oh, “The Venture Brothers.”

I’ve already spent more than that on a season of Ghost in the Shell mental math around $220CND I’d guess, and I’m planning on doing the same this year for 2nd Gig. Little much for a boxed set- though–something about a $200 price tag is more off-putting than 7 price tags of $30 each. But $150 wouldn’t be out of the question if I still got all the extras I did buying the seperate special editions. Otherwise, $100 tops.

I opened this thread specifically for Arrested Development. I’d subscribe ($200 a bit steep, though!).

Pretty much. I won’t even pay the $80 that Paramount wants for each season of Star Trek (my favorite show for almost ten years), let alone a hundred or more for a season of shows I’m not sure I’ll actually like.

Me, too.

I’m pretty sure this is the future of television, actually. Won’t be on DVD or any other physical medium; it’ll be delivered to your future-TiVo-style-device via broadband.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I expect it’ll work something like this (using current-ish shows as an example):

“New series — Lost! From the makers of Alias. Tonight’s premiere is free! You can order the next three episodes for fifteen dollars, or you can commit to the whole season for fifty. Five dollar discount for ABC Network members.”

“New series — Bones! First two episodes are free. The next five episodes are twenty dollars, or you can commit to the whole season for thirty-five.”

Survivor returns with a brand-new season! See what happens in Detroit! Available only as a whole season, for sixty dollars.”

“It’s the return of The Planet’s Funniest Animals with Matt Gallant! We’ll have twenty new installments this year. You can get them in blocks of five, at six dollars each, or the full run for twenty dollars.”

“That’s right, after sixty-twelve years, Friends is finally wrapping up its run. The full season will eighty dollars, and if you wait until the very end like a dumbass, the closing show by itself will be twenty. Act now!”

“Kicking yourself for missing out on the Lost phenomenon? Act now and you can catch up on the first four episodes for just ten dollars, and then add the rest of the season for another forty-five!”

Or whatever.

Get the idea? New shows have to give something away to hook viewers; lower-profile or lower-budgeted shows can’t charge as much. On the other hand, known hits won’t have to do anything for free.

There’ll be additional tiers for recent-but-not-immediately-current shows, like the first season of Monk, and I suppose some programs will be free on the future equivalent of TVLand, like Andy Griffith and Brady Bunch or whatever, with ads. (Or CGI inserts of product placement; the Fonz’s jacket might have a Planet Hollywood logo on it.)

I don’t know how the news will work. Time-based subscription, maybe, rather than per-episode. Like a newspaper crossed with CNN.

But yeah, the point is, this is where I think we’re headed.

And combining this with the question in the OP, I would have paid upwards of a hundred bucks a season to keep Firefly on the air. Doing some extrapolation: They had around 3 million regular viewers, I seem to recall. Cut that by a tenth to eliminate the non-serious fans, and multiply 300,000 by $100: that’s $30 million, or about $1.4 million per show. Doesn’t cover the $2-million-plus-per-episode budget, but it gives you an idea of what the market will bear. And maybe then the creator knows how much they can actually spend on the show, given what they’re actually earning. There’s a problem here in the financial model, in that you have to have half a dozen shows actually completed before you know how much you’re going to make back, but it does provide some pretty concrete feedback.

And Lost and Desperate Housewives would be rolling in money, wouldn’t they?

That should have been “cut that to a tenth.”